1. Field of the Invention
Ground clearing apparatus that is attachable to a loader, bulldozer, or tractor, and includes a combination of ripping, raking, and gripping elements for extracting and separating rocks, and roots, stumps, and other vegetation components from soil.
2. Description of Related Art
The clearing of rocks and/or vegetation from various landscapes requires powerful, robust machinery. This is typically accomplished through the use of bulldozers, loaders, or tractors, to which is attached one or more modular implements which can be used to perform a ground clearing function. The type of ground clearing functions may vary, depending upon the intended use of the cleared ground. Common uses of newly cleared ground are farming, or commercial, industrial, or residential development.
Oftentimes, the ground to be cleared will be a forest or a brush covered area. The objects to be cleared from the ground will thus include trees, stumps, and brush above the ground surface, and rocks and roots of widely varying size beneath the ground surface. To clear such ground, the ground clearing functions may include knocking over whole trees and stumps, dislodging the trees, stumps, and brush from the ground, ripping the roots from the ground and bringing them to the surface, dislodging rocks from the ground and bringing them to the surface, raking the ground to select and separate rocks and roots of a certain size threshold from the ground while leaving soil and smaller size debris behind, and picking up the rocks, trees, stumps, etc., and removing them to a remote location.
As currently practiced, ground clearing operations require a variety of implements that are attachable to a bulldozer, loader, or tractor. Each implement may have a particular function. For example, a blade may be used as a ground scraping device, and an object pushing device used for knocking trees and stumps over, and pushing them along the ground. A ripper having a few large teeth may be used to break-up sod allowing it to pass through the teeth thereof, while ripping roots and rocks from the ground. A rake may be used to separate rocks and roots of a certain size threshold from the ground. One or more rakes may be required, with each successive rake having an increased number of teeth, in order to achieve a range of rock and root size separations. A grapple may be used to pick up large objects, such as trees, stumps, rocks, and clusters of brush, and to transport them to another location, or drop them into a dump truck box for removal from the site.
Maintaining an inventory of such a range of implements is expensive, as is transporting all of these implements to a job site when they are needed. During a ground clearing operation, the numerous changeovers from one implement to another that are required to perform the full range of ground clearing operations is labor intensive, and therefore also costly. What is needed is a single implement which can be attached to a bulldozer, loader, or tractor, and which can perform multiple ground clearing operations.